Actualy I consider all of the possible choices neutral because they all have good and bad. He said nature was good and ancestor bad so I tried to explain how nature could be good and ancestor “bad”. My example is nature = freedom because nature is vast and free and ancestors = restrictions because you must honor those ancestors.
With regards to the MC not having the omniscience normally attributed to gods my plan was to show the god as something small that’s given power. Not some mighty being that created the world and has a divine plan but as a tiny spirit that’s used to explain the world by the people.
The idea is that the gods didn’t create the world, the people created the gods and, without knowing, both the gods and the people shape each other throughout the story.
But your right, you seem to have a lack of interest in humans but then have been watching the politics. Actually the idea is that most of the time has been spent on yourself learning about you new powers. I’ll try to go back over that section and reword it better.
Thanks so much for your feedback
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I just wouldn’t consider dying alone in the wilderness after a few months due to starvation, exposure or injury to equal freedom. The concept of freedom wouldn’t really be a big thing in the minds of people who have so little control over nature. It’s only once nature becomes less of an imminent threat that the idea of it representing freedom makes sense to me.
@Maxmansung I’m just using good and evil as short hand for ruling through inspiring positive emotions and ruling through inspiring negative emotions. Incidentally I’d personally call that evil because you aren’t really helping anyone, just gratifying a prejudice. If you aren’t omniscient then who are you to say who’s weak or strong?
I’m hoping to make that more obscure as the time goes on. Is it evil to kill other people if it’s to save your own? Is it evil to take control of a person or an animal?
Being inhuman might be considered evil but at the same time the MC is not human. It might be evil to be selfish but at the same time your big motivation for believers is originally to grow in power so your aim from the outset is selfishness.
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Loving this!
My Spirit always seems drawn to Inner Forces, though I’m not complaining, that godly concept seems pretty slick.
I do like the concept that both parts shape eachother ; this kinds of makes me wonder about our interraction with those big beings that questions our (past?) self on where we stand regarding your purpose and the humans, and i look forward to how you will end this hehehe
@cyanide Personally, i feel nature is even grey-er then religion, i view nature as a collective, a wider web thats so large it may be viewed as a being all in itself, serene forests hide massive secret wars bloodier then any wars made by men between all that thrive there, how established tree kills a sapling too close to its roots, how insects kill eachother to survive , to the large beasts that make up the most obvious of food chain to the soil that has more life in it than the cities in our world yet ,all make way for new life ,enigmatic natural phenomenons that occur, harsh but natural, terrible and revered, free? but governed in its own way ; beautiful and a privilege to ponder
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I completely agree with you there. The only problem is that shadow already have the true neutral spot if you see what I mean. Game mechanic and all.
I was curious if you had any thoughts on the discussion about the ancestors versus nature spirits. I mean, in general as far as modern morality is concerned ruling through fear is considered “bad”.
@Xhandas_Antonidas That was very pretty, though it didn’t exactly say much. A game like this is interesting because a lot of what “makes sense” in it is determined by how we define some really simple concepts. Like, a lot of people think of nature as “everything other than human stuff” … But from a scientific perspective that’s ridiculous. There is no such thing as “unnatural”, just stuff we don’t understand yet. Of course, religions are not exactly scientific. But then again, in this world they kind of are because there’s no question that deities exist, since we are one.
Well I was basing the concepts for spirits from beliefs I was aware of. Animals were from native American, Inuit and druids. Ancestors from Chinese and even Christian (the idea of ghosts that haunt). Demons from Christian, Islamic and Aztec (many of their gods were demonic forms) and natural forces from agnostic, atheist maybe native American (based on Disney pocahontas?).
Based in that animals and ancestors are both generally respected and revered.
Too be honest although I’ve done a little research on the religions I’m aware of my knowledge is biased by the fact I’m British with minimal exposure to many religions. Based on what I know animal spirits are protective whilst human spirits are feared. Swapping it around would make sense as well though. Both demons and natural forces are inhuman ideas and either can be seen as a belief or a fear.
My hope was to let people interperate how they want. You can be nature and then be feared as the game goes on without your form changing so it allows for your own take on the belief system hopefully.
Mixing up a bunch of different themes from varied mythologies from across the world seems like a recipe for confusion. XD Western European ideas of hostile ghosts aren’t in any way the aren’t thing as ancestor worship for example. It’s hard to interpret ruling through fear as not ruling through fear though, so if I don’t want to rule through fear I have to pick one of those options.
Yea, that’s why I’ve tried to be slightly vague with how the spirits are presented. People who play the game could be from any culture so those playing may see human spirits as something to fear or as something to revere. It’s also why I put that choice at the start, it’s not too heavily defined by your playstyle. As the game goes on you may play as a human spirit who rules through belief or a demon that’s quite human.
It’s up to the player to define what their people’s beliefs mean to them and hopefully player have been doing that without even realising based on their own culture and background
Well, the only way I’ve managed to get a human appearance so far is by being really aggressive and domineering. For some reason when i try to be nurturing and kind I end up as either an owl or a bear… which are both wild predators… That just doesn’t make sense to me. A bear doesn’t seem like a comforting sight to a person alone in the wilderness.
The dream sequence is a bit confusing. Like… am I supposed to be the Elder/Great One my follower is referring to and we’re just all talking about me in the third person, or is there supposed to be some other even more powerful entity she believes in besides me?
Can’t argue with that. What about later in the game? Do you feel the natural or human spirits are represented as mean or caring?
Based on what you’ve said it’s probably worth swapping those around with regards to fear and belief. Don’t know if anyone disagrees with that’s but seems the more logical way round
Later in the game it seems like they sort of equalize a lot more. I feel like I probably haven’t seen everything there is to see though, so I can’t say for sure. I guess there are little things that for example, if I were playing myself as a superhuman being, I would change. I don’t really get where the sacrifices come from. Do you tell them to sacrifice food to you for some reason? All you actually need is belief, you don’t need them to waste food they could use to survive. It’d be nice if you actually had some more explanation or choice in that area.
I found a few bugs. There’s reference to sacrificing Roc having saved Aire if you save him from danger, then try to heal Her. I don’t remember any sacrifice actually happening though. I was playing a human god of the sun, but then when it asks me to pick a new power the description for control of the ground implies that I’m associated with the moon.
Following up on my earlier comment about mixing mythologies being difficult. Religions view aspects of one another differently, so for example, Baal a is demon in myths of chrisitan societies, but that’s because he was originally a deity of a rival religion, and as far as the ancient Jews were concerned all other religions were inherently wrong and deserved to be destroyed and their followers massacred for being different. In order to justify this by modern morality so modern Christians can feel like their religion is “good” they have to interpret Baal as some sort of evil demonic entity.
I’ll take a look at that part, that shouldn’t be coming up.
With regards to the sacrifices the idea is that it’s out of your control. What your people do is based on a couple of your stats that I won’t give away for now but you never actually demand anything specifically from the believers. The idea is they feel the need to do more for these spirits so that they will be better protected and so they do what they think you want. They form their own beliefs and your just dragged along with it.
Again it’s the theme of the game that both you are influencing the followers and they influence you without realising it most of the time because the communication between both of you only occurs on occasion and even when it does one party often doesn’t listen properly.
Hm… I guess I never really got why you can’t give more specific instructions. I mean, when you only have the one follower it’s hard to communicate with her because it takes a lot of energy, but when you’ve gotten a whole village powering you it seemed like it’d be easy to give very specific and detailed instructions to those closest to you.
Then I need to change that. I’ll make it more clear that communicating is difficult but not impossible.
Your communication is limited to key moments when your followers are accessible. Originally I wrote it so that the lack of communication is due to the MCs own lack of interest in doing so most of the time but if people aren’t playing that way it doesn’t work.
Thanks so much for pointing these things out for me. I really need feedback like this to make the story flow better and make more sense
My view of nature came from the local native, the algonquians. They thought that nature was nobody propriety and that we could help each others trough gifts. They were very successfull until we came around with mercantilism and private property. But overall they almost never fought and lived as one with nature so I can certainly see this as good.
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Isn’t “Native Americans lived at one with nature” like “Asians are good at math” and “Jews are good with money”? A racist stereotype that isn’t necessarily hostile or negative, but that doesn’t stop it from being racist. Well, at least you’re talking about s specific native american culture so you might actually be on to something, but it’s not something I’d just take for granted. There’s also the issue of a cultural stir fry putting contradictory concepts together in ways that just don’t make sense. Culture developed differently around the world due to their environments. Taking a top down and building the world from parts of other more developed cultures is going to lead to some really weird issues. That being said, ‘helping each other though gifts’ sounds like a pretty specifically human thing.
I do kind of wonder if the ideas the native american stereotype were based on were more along the lines of realizing that there wasn’t a clear border between humans and nature, and that everything was connected. Humans are just as much a part of nature as the rest of the world. The concept of “unnatural” really only seems to comes from an anthropocentric (that’s definition 2 on Merriem Webster.com FYI) perspective… which in itself isn’t all that surprising considering that well, we’re human.
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All religions are a mix of concepts really. They are designed to explain the world around and bring a measure of hope and purpose to a community. By using broad concepts from multiple religions it give people the chance to choose what their story is representing. Ive never tried to make the nature spirits some Native American story, just used that as an example of a religion that used spirits of nature at times. Druids and Inuits didn’t only believe in nature spirits as well.
The religion is shaped by the environment as you’ll see at the end of chapter 3 but I can’t make the whole story based just on that else you’d have no control at all. Just be a story or watching some people create a religion as thing outside of your control happen.
Edit:
Also yes the line between natural and human is a blurred definition but so is the line between non alive and alive when you really look into it. You could argue semantics all day over concepts like this so for now I’ve used that definition to allow two very different beliefs (the belief that non human entities guide you and the belief that completely Human entities guide you)
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